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"Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks the whip. But the really well-trained dog is the one that turns somersaults when there is no whip" - George Orwell

“From scholarships and training programmes for officers to promises of Green Cards and jobs for family members, America is doing whatever it takes to build a lobby for itself in India” Rahul Bedi in The Hindu.

“To which business groups is Mukherjee [Pranab] beholden? Why was [he] chosen over Montek” [Montek Singh Ahluwalia as finance minister] - US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in her WikiLeaked cable.

India and the US may Never be Allies

In an interview with an Indian website, Strobe Talbott, a former deputy secretary of state in the Clinton administration and now president of the conservative Brookings Institution,Washington, DC think tank, the kind that guided, cajoled Washington into wars into Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya declared -

"And, by the way, one reason we may never be or not, in the foreseeable future, is because there is still a huge constituency in support of India's non-aligned status, despite the fact that I would say that non-alignment and the non-aligned movement is very much an artifact of the Cold War."

This was part of build up of US soft diplomacy to cajole and encourage Indian Corporate Counts and PR outlets led by the likes of The Indian Express editor in chief (who, in his 2003 Oped described illegal US invasion of Iraq – “–process of change (is)–to modernise and democratize and restructure the Islamic world – into Saudi Arabia and then every other part of the region where militant Islam breeds - Musharraf is not laughing – does that work to ourbenefit or detriment? This war will not be about oil but about militant Islam and everybody’s future. This is the bigger picture” – Thus spoke Sherlock Holmes to his Doctor Watson readers in his paper.

But then his alter ego Thomas Friedman of New York Times had declared the US criminal enterprise in Iraq as the noblest US mission to promote democracy. Nearly a million and half Iraqis have been killed since 2003 and the country destroyed, even the Mongols would feel proud of.

The Express has another promoter of US interests, one Raja Mohan. He even recommended India join the EU-NATO’s so-called human intervention i.e. bombing and killing civilians. The West has confiscated about US$ 30 billion of Libyan money, as it had of many billions of Iraq in 2003 and of Iran in 1979. Raja Mohan continues with his pro-US outpourings, is now back at a New Delhi center for US corporate propaganda. Of course he is compensated and occupied some US endowed University chair or another. Why go after only those who enjoyed the hospitality of ISI financed Ghulam Nabi Fai.

Talking of conflict of interest! It is beyond Indian way of thinking. Look at the shameless drama in Karnataka. India has become a caricature of US caricature of democracy.

Coming back to the artifact of the Cold War, as if it did ever stop. It was and is relentlessly pursued by Washington and its allies aka poodles and protectorates.

The New American Cold War

Stephen F. Cohen in an article "The New American Cold War" wrote in 10 July 2006 issue of US magazine, "The Nation" that "A tacit (and closely related) US denial that Russia has any legitimate national interests outside its own territory, even in ethnically akin or contiguous former republics such as Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia." Late Richard Holbrooke, former US point man for Af-Pak had condemned Russia for promoting a pro-Moscow government in neighboring Ukraine, where Russia has centuries of shared linguistic, marital, religious, economic and security ties and declared, that far-away Slav nation part of "our core zone of security."

"Even more, a presumption that Russia does not have full sovereignty within its own borders, as expressed by constant US interventions in Moscow's internal affairs since 1992 - included an on-site crusade by swarms of American "advisers," to direct Russia's "transition" from Communism;

So has the cold war finished! If US can treat Russia like that than what to expect from spineless Indians, ever ready to love US presidents deeply and singing praises of British colonialism. These are signs of genetic mutation embedded in acolonised and enslaved mind.

So what Talbolt says is that if you are not with us you are against us. Be an ally like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Yemen and others. Do not expect much change with those suffering from Washington Consensus Syndrome and controlling Indian foreign policy. What can 79 year old Foreign Minister Krishna contribute? PM wants a dummy Foreign minister who pleases Washington and PMO surrounds itself for foreign policy advice from those who kowtow to Washington.

The fact is that US and India’s strategic interests have rarely coincided fully and are unlikely any time soon, but Washington wants New Delhi to give in. US gifted defense grants and hardware to Pakistan, which has always been used against India and not China or USSR. Washington let Pakistan complete its nuke program. NPT was created primarily as an instrument against India.

US gifted billions in 1980s and trained terror groups which now attack India at will. David Headley, an FBI double agent was complicit in 26/11 rampage in Mumbai. If India had a lawyer with courage and patriotism, a case could be filed in a Mumbai court charging FBI for complicity in 26/11 as a case has been filed against ISI in USA.

Let these supporters of Washington or trumpets state, when has Washington ever taken India’s interests into account. The nuclear energy deal? Has George Bush much else to show except disasters in his foreign policy? Did we get a clean waiverfrom NSG as claimed? Talbot and his ilk and his supporters in India wanted India to buy US fighter aircraft and be tied to Washington’s wishes and policies regarding Indian security. India must sign nuclear liability bill. So what if there are Bhopal or Fukushima like catastrophes!

In the name of promoting 'democracy' murders and criminal acts are perpetrated daily and violation of international and human laws has become a second nature to US and its European poodles with help from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Freedom House and George Soros' Open Society Institute. The NED has four affiliate institutes: The International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS) among others.

Washington openly allots money in its budget for promoting rebellion, mayhem and even terror acts against governments, which do not surrender to US interests and dictates.

Below is an article by Kanwal Sibal, a former Foreign Secretary of India, one of the few patriotic ones in recent years to occupy the office.

What is “Strategic” about Promoting PVT Firms?by Kanwal Sibal

The second round of the India-US strategic dialogue has not produced anything especially noteworthy. The bilateral agenda is “transformational” in scope, as it seeks to overcome the hurdles and inhibitions of the past, and has spawned 21 Dialogues and Working Groups on diverse subjects. Progress, however, depends not on the wishes of one side, but on the capacity of the two sides to establish a mutually beneficial basis of engagement.

We have to be careful about terminological hype. Why accelerate the pace of consensus building on difficult issues by wrapping the exercise in the verbal mantle of a “strategic” relationship. Many of the economic issues on the agenda relate to market access for US companies whose only “strategic” interest is profits and shareholder value. What is specifically strategic in the bilateral demand made on us to introduce more banking, insurance, retail trade andlabour reforms?

On terrorism, the US gives us support within the limitations of its valued realtionship with Pakistan and the new compulsions arising from its entanglement in Afghanistan, from which it wants to extract itself sufficiently to enable President Obama to go in for his re-election. Pakistan has heard the American calls for bringing the perpetrators of the Mumbai carnage to justice often enough to ignore them, and Clinton has acknowledged in her joint press conference yesterday that there are limitations on what the US and India can do to make Pakistan perform. What she implies is that despite growing frustration with Pakistan, the US will not use the leverages at its disposal to compel it to eliminate terrorist safe-havens on its territory and would not expect India to ratchet up pressure either. The bilateral Homeland Security dialogue is valuable in building up our capacities to handle the terrorist threat, but thereare big opportunities here as well for US companies specializing in producing or integrating security equipment.

On Afghanistan, we have now endorsed an Afghan-led and Afghan owned inclusive reconciliation process. Withan Afghan government so dependent on US support, and the “reconciliation” processbeing so vital for some of US’s NATO partners in particular, this Afghan led and owned processseems a bit of a sham. Does it mean that Pakistan will be kept out, or the Taliban groups it backs? Hardly likely.

On the civil nuclear issue, Secretary Clinton is hoping that India’s ratification of the Convention on Supplementary Compensation by the end of the year will resolve the problem of liability raised for US companies by our Nuclear Liability Legislation. She has exhorted us to work with the IAEA to make our legislation compatible with international practice. This implies a legal watering down of our domestic law on the ground that it should conform to international law. This doesn’t seem a viable prospect.

On the issue of transfer of Enrichment and Reprocessing (EPR) technologies to India, further restricted at last month’s NSG meeting in the Netherlands by listing NPT membership as one of the criteria for eligibility, Clinton skirted the issue by stating that nothing in the new restrictions detracting form the impact and importance of the India-US nuclear deal, and reiterated the mantra of US commitment to full civilian cooperation with India. How the US position against such transfers to India, conveyed to the Congress at the time of negotiating the nuclear deal, the subsequent G-8 stand, and now the NSG decision, to both of which the US was a party, can be reconciled with India’s expectations and interpretations is a riddle that remains to be solved. The US position is legally clear but it is using politically comforting formulations so as not to embarrass the Indian partner.

On other veritably strategic issues such as high and dual use technology or space matters the second round showed no advance. On defence, the pending three agreements on logisitics, inter-operability and geo-spatial cooperation seem to be off the agenda for the time being, but defence procurement from the US has progressed satisfactorily despite the rebuff to the US companies in the 126 fighter deal, to which the US seems to have reconciled itself.

All in all the second round produced the results it realistically could.